Paolo Bruni, president of Italian fresh produce company Apo Conerpo and Italy's National Federation of Agricultural and Agri-Food Cooperatives (Fedagri-Confcooperative), has labelled the European Commission's decision to remove marketing standards for certain fresh fruits and vegetables 'a joke', warning it will bring about an inevitable race to the bottom in terms of prices, to the detriment of quality production.
Speaking shortly after EU members backed proposals to repeal rules governing marketing standards on 26 different fruit and vegetables, Mr Bruni spoke of his organisation's disappointment at the decision.
'As Italian cooperatives, we are doubly disappointed by this outcome as, during the course of this year, we had already shown our full opposition, countersigned by cooperative organisations in France, Spain and Greece, to this deregulation, both in the proposal's initial publication phase and also after the management committee meeting on 23 July, when a sufficient majority was not reached,' explained Mr Bruni, one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian fresh produce business. 'For that reason, we asked the Commission to be more reasonable and not to abuse its vote in order to reach agreement on the regulations.'
According to Mr Bruni, the Commission decided to go against the committee's original 16 votes against the proposal versus nine (largely northern European countries) in favour. 'They have distanced themselves from the interested of the European supply chain and in particular the main producer countries,' he added.
The decision to remove marketing standards on most items of fresh produce sold in the EU also puts consumers at a disadvantage, argued Mr Bruni. 'This is also a joke for consumers, who will find themselves spending the same amount for products of inferior quality and ripeness, while no longer having a means of deciding what to buy according to the relationship between quality and price,' he observed. 'Consumers will continue to pay, for example, two euros for a kilogramme of fresh produce, but one day they will buy a good product and the following day they will buy a bad product. The price won't be connected to quality. Instead it will be strongly influenced by speculation and a foreseeable rise in the power of the retailers.'
The new standards, which will come into force on 1 July 2009, apply to apricots, artichokes, asparagus, aubergines, avocados, beans, brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflowers, cherries, courgettes, cucumbers, cultivated mushrooms, garlic, hazelnuts in shell, headed cabbage, leeks, melons, onions, peas, plums, ribbed celery, spinach, walnuts in shell, watermelons and chicory.
